Logo #44: Stiff Little Fingers

A note from Stiff Little Fingers about their 1978 logo: "The band's bass player, Ali McMordie, came up with the design. It was originally a spoof on the Tom Robinson Band's "clenched fist" design as on the cover of their first album. SLF were about to tour, supporting the TRB and this was an affectionate jibe in their direction." A nice example of an instantly identifiable logo springing from social phenomenon that - when it started, at least - could in no way be co-opted by The Man. The double-entendre, at the very least, thrust into pop culture consciousness as it was in the ‘70s and ‘80s by the abundance of “jiggle TV” programs like “Three’s Company,” made what would have been borderline obscene a couple of decades earlier gradually something at which to merely titter - the implicit meaning becoming almost as obvious as the spoken word. For more on how language shapes our experience even more than we possibly know, one can do no better than to read Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature". Recently published, it's deftly adept at simply explaining why we say what we say and thus do what we do.q